Agricultural revolution and industrialization

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Chu, Angus C.; Peretto, Pietro F.; Wang, Xilin
• 署名单位: University of Macau; Fudan University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2022.102887
• 发表日期: 2022
• 关键词: Agricultural technology; Endogenous takeoff; INNOVATION; Economic growth

摘要

This study explores how agricultural technology affects the endogenous takeoff of an economy in the Schumpeterian growth model. Due to the subsistence requirement for agricultural consumption, an im-provement in agricultural technology reallocates labor from agriculture to the industrial sector. Therefore, agricultural improvement expands firm size in the industrial sector, which determines innovation and triggers an endogenous transition from stagnation to growth. Calibrating the model to data, we find that without the reallocation of labor from agriculture to the industrial sector in the early 19th century, the takeoff of the US economy would have been delayed by about four decades.